Media convergence

"The book brings together experts from Media and Communication Studies with Postcolonial Studies scholars to illustrate how the two fields may challenge and enrich each other. Its essays introduce readers to selected topics including »Media Convergence«, »Transcultural Subjectivity«, »Hegemony«, »Piracy« and »Media History and Colonialism«. Drawing on examples from film, literature, music, TV and the internet, the contributors investigate the transnational dimensions in today's media, engage with local and global media politics and discuss media outlets as economic agents, thus illustrating mechanisms of power in postcolonial and neo-colonial mediascapes."--Publisher website

Supporting knowledge-intensive construction management tasks in BIM

The delivery of products and services for construction-based businesses is increasingly becoming knowledge-driven and information-intensive. The proliferation of building information modelling (BIM) has increased business opportunities as well as introduced new challenges for the architectural, engineering and construction and facilities management (AEC/FM) industry. As such, the effective use, sharing and exchange of building life cycle information and knowledge management in building design, construction, maintenance and operation assumes a position of paramount importance. This paper identifies a subset of construction management (CM) relevant knowledge for different design conditions of building components through a critical, comprehensive review of synthesized literature and other information gathering and knowledge acquisition techniques. It then explores how such domain knowledge can be formalized as ontologies and, subsequently, a query vocabulary in order to equip BIM users with the capacity to query digital models of a building for the retrieval of useful and relevant domain-specific information. The formalized construction knowledge is validated through interviews with domain experts in relation to four case study projects. Additionally, retrospective analyses of several design conditions are used to demonstrate the soundness (realism), completeness, and appeal of the knowledge base and query-based reasoning approach in relation to the state-of-the-art tools, Solibri Model Checker and Navisworks. The knowledge engineering process and the methods applied in this research for information representation and retrieval could provide useful mechanisms to leverage BIM in support of a number of knowledge intensive CM/FM tasks and functions.

Sugarcane-Based Biofuels and Bioproducts

Sugarcane has garnered much interest for its potential as a viable renewable energy crop. While the use of sugar juice for ethanol production has been in practice for years, a new focus on using the fibrous co-product known as bagasse for producing renewable fuels and bio-based chemicals is growing in interest. The success of these efforts, and the development of new varieties of energy canes, could greatly increase the use of sugarcane and sugarcane biomass for fuels while enhancing industry sustainability and competitiveness. Sugarcane-Based Biofuels and Bioproducts examines the development of a suite of established and developing biofuels and other renewable products derived from sugarcane and sugarcane-based co-products, such as bagasse. Chapters provide broad-ranging coverage of sugarcane biology, biotechnological advances, and breakthroughs in production and processing techniques. This text brings together essential information regarding the development and utilization of new fuels and bioproducts derived from sugarcane. Authored by experts in the field, Sugarcane-Based Biofuels and Bioproducts is an invaluable resource for researchers studying biofuels, sugarcane, and plant biotechnology as well as sugar and biofuels industry personnel.

Honesty in the provision of expert services: The effect of naturalistic framings and participants' professions

This thesis studies the incentives and behaviour of providers of expert services, like doctors, financial advisors and mechanics. The focus is in particular on provision of health care using a series of credence goods experiments conducted to investigate undertreatment, overtreatment and overcharging in a medical context. The findings of study one suggest that a medical framing compared to a neutral framing significantly increases pro-social behaviour for standard participants in economic experiments. Study two compares the behaviour of medical practitioners - mainly doctors - to students. It is observed that medical doctors’ undertreat and overcharge significantly less, but at the same time overtreat significantly more than students. The final study compares behaviours for other experts - accountants, engineers and lawyers - using experimental framings drawn from the respective contexts and students from the respective faculties as participants in credence goods experiments.

Clinical teaching: Maintaining an educational role for doctors in the new health care environment

Context and objectives: Good clinical teaching is central to medical education but there is concern about maintaining this in contemporary, pressured health care environments. This paper aims to demonstrate that good clinical practice is at the heart of good clinical teaching. Methods: Seven roles are used as a framework for analysing good clinical teaching. The roles are medical expert, communicator, collaborator, manager, advocate, scholar and professional. Results: The analysis of clinical teaching and clinical practice demonstrates that they are closely linked. As experts, clinical teachers are involved in research, information retrieval and sharing of knowledge or teaching. Good communication with trainees, patients and colleagues defines teaching excellence. Clinicians can 'teach' collaboration by acting as role models and by encouraging learners to understand the responsibilities of other health professionals. As managers, clinicians can apply their skills to the effective management of learning resources. Similarly skills as advocates at the individual, community and population level can be passed on in educational encounters. The clinicians' responsibilities as scholars are most readily applied to teaching activities. Clinicians have clear roles in taking scholarly approaches to their practice and demonstrating them to others. Conclusion: Good clinical teaching is concerned with providing role models for good practice, making good practice visible and explaining it to trainees. This is the very basis of clinicians as professionals, the seventh role, and should be the foundation for the further development of clinicians as excellent clinical teachers.

A definition of food literacy and its components

This chapter defines food literacy and its components using the empirical data collected in two studies undertaken in 2010 and 2011 as part of the author’s PhD thesis. The first was a Delphi study of Australian food experts and the second was a study of young adults across a spectrum of disadvantage. Defining food literacy and identifying its components was an iterative process. At different times throughout the research, each study informed the other. This chapter will describe the components of food literacy, the data used to identify them and how they combined to produce a definition of food literacy.

General Practitioner Antimicrobial Stewardship Programme Study (GAPS): protocol for a cluster randomised controlled trial

Background There is a strong link between antibiotic consumption and the rate of antibiotic resistance. In Australia, the vast majority of antibiotics are prescribed by general practitioners, and the most common indication is for acute respiratory infections. The aim of this study is to assess if implementing a package of integrated, multifaceted interventions reduces antibiotic prescribing for acute respiratory infections in general practice. Methods/design This is a cluster randomised trial comparing two parallel groups of general practitioners in 28 urban general practices in Queensland, Australia: 14 intervention and 14 control practices. The protocol was peer-reviewed by content experts who were nominated by the funding organization. This study evaluates an integrated, multifaceted evidence-based package of interventions implemented over a six month period. The included interventions, which have previously been demonstrated to be effective at reducing antibiotic prescribing for acute respiratory infections, are: delayed prescribing; patient decision aids; communication training; commitment to a practice prescribing policy for antibiotics; patient information leaflet; and near patient testing with C-reactive protein. In addition, two sub-studies are nested in the main study: (1) point prevalence estimation carriage of bacterial upper respiratory pathogens in practice staff and asymptomatic patients; (2) feasibility of direct measures of antibiotic resistance by nose/throat swabbing. The main outcome data are from Australia’s national health insurance scheme, Medicare, which will be accessed after the completion of the intervention phase. They include the number of antibiotic prescriptions and the number of patient visits per general practitioner for periods before and during the intervention. The incidence of antibiotic prescriptions will be modelled using the numbers of patients as the denominator and seasonal and other factors as explanatory variables. Results will compare the change in prescription rates before and during the intervention in the two groups of practices. Semi-structured interviews will be conducted with the general practitioners and practice staff (practice nurse and/or practice manager) from the intervention practices on conclusion of the intervention phase to assess the feasibility and uptake of the interventions. An economic evaluation will be conducted to estimate the costs of implementing the package, and its cost-effectiveness in terms of cost per unit reduction in prescribing. Discussion The results on the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, acceptability and feasibility of this package of interventions will inform the policy for any national implementation.

Personal health data - Privacy policy harmonization and global enforcement

This workshop is jointly organized by EFMI Working Groups Security, Safety and Ethics and Personal Portable Devices in cooperation with IMIA Working Group "Security in Health Information Systems". In contemporary healthcare and personal health management the collection and use of personal health information takes place in different contexts and jurisdictions. Global use of health data is also expanding. The approach taken by different experts, health service providers, data subjects and secondary users in understanding privacy and the privacy expectations others may have is strongly context dependent. To make eHealth, global healthcare, mHealth and personal health management successful and to enable fair secondary use of personal health data, it is necessary to find a practical and functional balance between privacy expectations of stakeholder groups. The workshop will highlight these privacy concerns by presenting different cases and approaches. Workshop participants will analyse stakeholder privacy expectations that take place in different real-life contexts such as portable health devices and personal health records, and develop a mechanism to balance them in such a way that global protection of health data and its meaningful use is realized simultaneously. Based on the results of the workshop, initial requirements for a global healthcare information certification framework will be developed.

2nd ESMO Consensus Conference in Lung Cancer: Locally advanced stage III non-small-cell lung cancer

To complement the existing treatment guidelines for all tumour types, ESMO organises consensus conferences to focus on specific issues in each type of tumour. The 2nd ESMO Consensus Conference on Lung Cancer was held on 11–12 May 2013 in Lugano. A total of 35 experts met to address several questions on non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in each of four areas: pathology and molecular biomarkers, first-line/second and further lines of treatment in advanced disease, early-stage disease and locally advanced disease. For each question, recommendations were made including reference to the grade of recommendation and level of evidence. This consensus paper focuses on locally advanced disease.

Strategies for improving safety and health of ethnic minority construction workers

The construction industries of developed countries are faced with an aging workforce and a shortage of recruits. It is common for migrant workers/ethnic minorities (EMs) who are already part of the society to join the construction industry. With increasing involvement of EMs in the construction industry, effective strategies for improving their safety and health are urgently needed. The existing body of knowledge is mainly derived from research conducted in English-speaking countries with Western cultures. Research on safety of migrant/EM construction workers in multidialect Asian countries with Eastern cultures has been lacking. This study aimed to identify various strategies for improving the safety and health of EM construction workers from the Asian perspective. Twenty-two face-to-face semistructured interviews were performed with safety professionals in Hong Kong followed by two rounds of Delphi survey with 18 safety experts to verify the interview findings and rank the relative importance of the strategies. The study unveiled 14 strategies for improving the safety performance of EM workers. The three most important ones identified were: (1) to provide safety training in EM native languages; (2) that government and industry associations should play an active role in promoting health and safety awareness of EM workers, and; (3) to encourage EM workers to learn the local language. This study contributes to filling the research gap by evaluating the strategies for improving safety of migrant/EM construction workers in Asian countries with Eastern cultures in which English is not the first language. Research findings would assist occupational health and safety experts and relevant stakeholders in designing strategies for improving the safety and health of EM workers, which will ultimately improve overall safety performance of the construction industry.